I pour coffee with shaking hands, add a generous splash of Bailey’s, and step out onto my back porch despite the cold. The prints are even clearer up close, and I kneel beside the nearest one, careful not to disturb it. The edges are sharp, precise, and there’s something about the depth that suggests incredible weight. Whatever made these tracks is massive.
But it’s not just the size that makes my skin prickle with awareness. It’s the placement. They circle my cabin in a perfect ring, always staying just far enough away to avoid threatening, but close enough that I can see them from every window.
Like a guardian’s patrol. Or a predator marking territory.
The thought should terrify me. Any sane person would call the sheriff right now, report a dangerous animal stalking their property. But as I trace the outline of the print with one finger,all I feel is a bone-deep certainty that whatever left these tracks means me no harm.
The opposite, actually. I feel…protected.
I follow the trail with my eyes, noting how it weaves between the trees with an almost mathematical precision. Whoever—whatever—made these tracks knows this forest intimately. And knows exactly how to move without triggering my motion-sensor lights or making enough noise to wake me.
Professional. Deliberate. Careful.
The coffee burns warm in my chest, and I take another sip, letting the Bailey’s smooth the edges of my mounting confusion. This is insane. I’m standing in my jeans and boots, drinking Irish coffee at seven in the morning, studying mysterious animal tracks and thinking about golden-eyed dreams like they’re normal morning activities.
But maybe insane is exactly where I need to be right now. Maybe normal never stood a chance from the moment I locked eyes with that impossible reindeer stag on the forest road.
Back inside, I shower and dress for work, trying to pretend this is just another day. But every few minutes, I catch myself glancing out windows, looking for more signs, more evidence that my life has taken a hard left turn into fairy tale territory.
And I find it.
At the wildlife center, I’m elbow-deep in mixing formula for some orphaned fox kits when Laura, one of our volunteers, pokes her head into the prep room.
“Hey, Jessa? There’s something weird out front you might want to see.”
I follow her outside, expecting maybe a lost dog or an early tourist looking for directions. Instead, I stare at the most elaborate arrangement of natural materials I’ve ever seen.
Someone has woven together pine boughs, birch bark, and what looks like shed antlers into an intricate pattern that spans the entire width of our front walkway. It’s beautiful and complex and utterly impossible—the kind of thing that would take innumerable hours to create, and we locked up at six last night.
“When did this appear?” I ask, kneeling to examine the craftsmanship up close. The materials are fresh, the pine still beading with sap, the bark supple and unmarked by weather.
“It was here when I arrived this morning,” Laura says, and there’s something in her voice that makes me look up. “But Jessa… that’s not the weird part.”
She points to the snow around the arrangement, and my heart does a complicated flip in my chest. There, pressed into the pristine white surface, are more hoofprints. The same impossible size and shape as the ones around my cabin, arranged in careful circles around the woven pattern like a signature.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Laura asks.
I shake my head, not trusting my voice. Because I have seen something like this, actually. Not in person, but in books. In folklore texts and anthropological studies about indigenous cultures and their relationship with nature spirits.
Offerings. Territorial markers.Courtshipdisplays.
The thought hits me like a physical blow, and I have to sit back on my heels to keep from swaying. Courtship displays. Like abowerbird arranging colorful objects to attract a mate, or a wolf bringing food to show his ability to provide.
But that would mean…
“Should we call someone?” Laura’s voice seems to come from very far away. “Animal control, maybe? This seems like unusual behavior for local wildlife.”
“No.” The word comes out sharper than I intend, and I soften it with a smile that feels like plastic. “It’s probably just some local artist playing a prank. You know how weird people get around the holidays.”
Laura nods, accepting the explanation because it’s easier than the alternative. But as she heads back inside, I remain crouched beside the arrangement, running my fingers over the intricate weaving and trying to process what’s happening to my carefully ordered life.
Someone is watching me. Following me. Leaving me gifts.
And instead of being terrified, I’m…intrigued. More than intrigued. There’s something building in my chest, a warmth that has nothing to do with the Bailey’s in my coffee and everything to do with the careful attention clear in every twisted twig and perfectly placed bough.
This took time. Thought. Care.
Someone—something—is courting me with the patience and artistry of a master craftsman. And the romantic in me, the part I thought I’d successfully buried under years of practical independence, is absolutely enchanted.
